Management Arts

The importance of qualitative housing units and by extension, the general environment on the life of individuals, communities and even nations at large, can never be over-emphasized. But unfortunately, achieving these have become nearly impossible, especially in the third world countries, despite the adoption of various national and international policy frameworks like Agenda 21 and the UN Habitat II. Thus, human settlements have become the avenues through which the physical environment is abused and misused to the detriment of the present and future generations. Among the chief problems bedevilling human settlements is the non implementation of development plans leading to the poor state of housing units and the surrounding environment, which in one way or the other, affects the residents psychologically and health-wise. Therefore, this paper assessed the relationship between housing quality and neighbourhood types in the relatively new formal and informal neighbourhoods of Minna. In order to achieve this, four neighbourhoods were randomly selected from each of the formal and informal areas. Consequently, a total of 97 questionnaires (representing 10% of the total population i.e. the housing units) were proportionally administered and the phi-coefficient technique of hypothesis testing was employed. The result of this showed that there is no statistically significant relationship between neighbourhood types and housing quality, i.e. the housing and environmental conditions of the selected formal and informal residential neighbourhoods are not statistically significantly different. Therefore, the paper recommended the computerisation of all land titles and documents in Minna in order to have a comprehensive data bank on land matters. It also recommended the development of a more pragmatic housing policy and programme where resources from both the public and private sectors would be mobilized in order to massively improve the conditions of the existing housing stock as well as the construction of new ones.

The prices of oil, natural gas, uranium and coal are increasing at a high rate. It gives importance for all countries to focus on development of alternative energy resources. For developing countries, these price increases can have disastrous economic consequences; for many countries already overwhelmed by poverty this means a choice between fuel and food, health care, education and other essentials. Renewable energy resources need priority because: 1) the rapid climate change; 2) the severe health and environmental consequences from fossil fuel burning being experienced in every major developing country city; and 3) the high cost, environmental damages and security threats of nuclear power.

A good insight of performance or execution in projects along with needed requirements of project management has the most important effect on customers’ satisfactions in a project-based organization. The performance result of each project in an organization has direct relationship with interaction manner of executive processes with project.In this paper, the combination of Delphi and Analytical Network Process (ANP) and Friedman Test have  been applied to detect and rank the best strategy for improving customer’s satisfaction and determining its most important sub-indexes.Based upon obtained results, cost as the main area of project management has the most important effect on customer’s satisfaction in case of applying Information Technology (IT) in BRP of PBO, and the most important strategy in improving and boosting customers’ satisfaction in PBOs is BRP. Furthermore, IT and software are respectively the most important and considerable sub-indexes of structures and IT in BRP of PBOs.

Despite the existence of several service quality models that have attempted to predict customer satisfaction in relation to service quality in various services, empirical studies applied to service settings in selected developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, have proven beyond any doubt that the orthodox SERVQUAL, SERVPERF, and Human-Societal Element (HSE) models not only do not apply to developing countries’ settings, but also give misleading and distorted indicators of the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction in these developing countries. Thus, the major objective of the current exploratory study is to investigate and pinpoint the reasons that make the orthodox models of service quality inapplicable in the context of developing counties, and to suggest ways and means of developing a service quality model that is oriented to the unique cultural, social, and psychological aspects of customers in the developing countries. This proposed specific model may enable organizations in the Third World to be in a better position to predict customer satisfaction and loyalty with a high degree of accuracy, and formulate proper target marketing strategies in this direction.

Background: Discharge and Billing process being the final step in the hospital experience is likely to be well remembered by the patient. Even if everything else went satisfactorily, a slow, frustrating discharge process can result in low patient satisfaction. Thus this study was carried out with the aim to ascertain the average time taken for the patient to be discharged in a tertiary care teaching hospital of Karnataka. Method: Registers were designed for the study purpose and were kept in the ward and billing office. Instructions were given to the nurses in the ward and clerical staff at the billing office about the study and entries to be made in the register. The average time taken for the whole discharge process of an individual patient was calculated using the data maintained in the registers. The statistical analysis was made to ascertain the average time taken for discharge. Appropriate tables and graphs are used for representing various findings and results. Results and Conclusion: The average time taken for the whole discharge process i.e. Intra processing time +Inter processing time of an individual patient is 2 hours 22 minutes.

Medical-Tourism is the buzz word and talk of the day, today. State-of-the art medical assistance and the potential and exciting tourism opportunities joined together and leading to the most potential segment that is Medical-Tourism in health industries and tourism industries segment. Though it is advanced globally, India has entered this field and marching ahead. Economical and affordable cost of medical sciences with tourism attached to it, is making the seekers to throng to our country and is offering as a potential segment of business with both modern and ancient medicine in process. There are many leading players in this segment both in public and private sectors. This article discusses few of the above issues and potential Opportunities in this segment.

The study – Professionalism, Gender and Media Competences in Broadcast Organisations in Nigeria – was aimed at ascertaining if women, as a result of their gender, were deprived of some duties in the media; if the broadcast organisations engaged in gender balancing in assigning news beats and if women occupied decision-making positions in the news organisations. It was also meant to ascertain, from the women’s point of view, the attitude of men towards women in decision-making positions. The study covered female journalists and producers in four broadcast organisations in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria, namely Akwa Ibom Broadcasting Corporation, AKBC, both Television and Radio Services; Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Channel 12, Uyo and Atlantic FM, Uyo. Fifty three female media operatives constituted the population of the study, and all of them were polled. The measuring instrument was the questionnaire. The findings showed that women had, on merit, without any gender balancing act, risen to positions of trust in the media, and were no longer restricted to the soft beats hitherto reserved for women. It was concluded that the growing influence of women both in number and position in the peripheral media was a signpost to the revolution which was imminent in the media at the centre.

This paper aims to study the effectiveness of the current education systems from the point of view of satisfying the industry demand for workforce. The current system is translated into the terminology of supply chain management (SCM), as it can be formulated as a ‘push system’ in SCM. As opposed to this education system which is highly centralized and lacks cooperation between the stakeholders, a new ‘pull system’ is proposed in this research. The proposed system incorporates high level of cooperation between the educational institutions and the stakeholders in the policy-making process. Shift from a push system to a pull system is considered along with a shift from the current paradigm of social sciences to the new paradigm, named as Quantum Paradigm. The concepts of SCM are evaluated through the window of quantum theory. The research also covers management issues for the educational leaders in practice.

Rapid growth of internet and market globalization, have led the organizations to try on attracting customers in such competitive electronic market. In this battle, the only way to gain competitive advantage and becoming market’ leader, is providing highly qualified electronic services. In this research, the quality of Tejarat Bank’ e-services in Iran and its relation with customer satisfaction have been evaluated. The research is an applied descriptive survey. The dimensions of e-banking services’ quality include Efficiency, Reliability, Security, Privacy, Trust, Responsiveness, Contact, Website Design, Service Variety. The population contains all of Internet banking customers of Tehran. Sample volume was calculated by Cochran method and was 270. Then, a questionnaire was designed based on SERVPERF questionnaire framework and was distributed among the respondents. The calculated data were analyzed through SPSS. The results for first hypothesis showed that e-banking services of Tejarat Bank had an optimum quality of the customers’ viewpoint with 95% significance. The results of second hypothesis showed that, with 95% of significance, there was a positive relation between service quality and customer satisfaction. Also, the dimensions of Efficiency, Reliability, Service Variety, Responsiveness, Website design and Privacy had the most relation with customer satisfaction, respectively

Quality of work life is a large step forward from the traditional job design of scientific management which focused solely on specialization and efficiency for the performance of narrow tasks, adopting division of labour, rigid hierarchy, and standardization of labour to reach its objective of efficiency. Quality of work life can be defined as “The quality of relationship between employees and the total working environment”. Quality of work life is “The degree to which members of a work organization are able to satisfy important personnel needs through their experience in the organization”. “Happy employees could able to produce higher productivity. The happiness can be perceived only when the employees good satisfaction on the work load, working condition, relationship with peers, superiors and subordinates about the climate plays a crucial role to determine the level of job satisfaction. The present study is descriptive in nature, which includes surveys and fact findings enquiries of different kind. Both Primary and Secondary Data were collected in order to obtain the related information for this study. Sample size of this study was 100. The data thus collected through questionnaire were subdued into suitable tabular forms. For analyzing the data and interpretation, simple statistical tools like percentage, chi-square and Henry Garrot Ranking method were used. At last the findings, suggestions and conclusion were made for the improvement of quality of work life in the organization.